Visor-like caps are in widespread use for various outdoor activities as a sunshade or screen. For instance, they are almost exclusively used by baseball players and by a great number of golfers and tennis players. Typically, the caps are subjected to an extreme amount of abuse, wear and tear as well as being deformed out of their proper configuration when laundered or folded into one's pocket or stuffed into a golf bag pocket. Under repeated use, conventional caps ten to become misshapen and this is especially true of the more popular form of visor in which the entire bill is reinforced with a cardboard or cardboard-like material which when folded or severely bent will not very easily return to its original curved configuration.
It has been proposed in the past to devise full-brimmed hats with outer wire or wire-like reinforcing members which can be coiled into a compact condition for storage purposes and, for example, reference is made to U.S. Pat. No. 2,007,235 to E. R. Woodside and U.S. Pat. No. 2,495,041 to M. Weiss. Similar approaches are disclosed in other U.S. Pat. No. 2,149,468 to J. T. Santise, U.S. Pat. No. 1,636,889 to E. Wittcoff, U.S. Pat. No. 1,558,142 to M. Brenner and U.S. Pat. No. 2,845,289 to E. G. Cicogna, but in most all cases propose the use of some form of special material, such as, a fabric having directional strength or a particular dimensional relationship between the size of the brim and size of the reinforcing member, such as, in the hereinbefore referred to patents to Woodside and Weiss.
Visor-like cap constructions have been devised with deformable reinforcing wires but are typically used in combination with other reinforcing elements and not designed in such a way that the caps can be coiled into a compact storage condition so as not to become misshapen when not in use; yet, when uncoiled, will automatically spring back into their original crescent-shaped configuration with a curved bill when placed on the head of the wearer. Representative patents disclosing visor-like cap constructions with a reinforcing or stiffener section are U.S. Pat. No. 2,931,046 to H. D. Klein, U.S. Pat. No. 1,666,098 to G. P. Kaul, U.S. Pat. No. 971,503 to C. I. Howard, U.S. Pat. No. 351,466 to J. J. Robbins and U.S. Pat. No. 1,435,533 to L. C. Knackstedt. Other foreign patents of interest are British Patent No. 187,553 to W. Schwalbe and Austrian Patent No. 3,627 to J. Komrowsky. A patent of particular interest in this regard is U.S. Pat. No. 3,357,026 to R. C. Wiegandt in which a resilient stay or wire is designed to reinforce and lend a specific shape to the bill of a cap without utilizing a cardboard or similar material in the bill itself. However, in Weigandt, as is true in many of the other visor-like cap constructions, the resilient stay or stiffener member must be removed before the hat can be folded into a collapsed condition for storage.